A few months into WFH, and you feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get the work done, let alone do all the other things you need to do for yourself. Reading a book, finishing that online course, or cooking a decent meal for yourself and your family. But shouldn’t you have more time now? If you live in one of the more crowded and overloaded cities in the world, you’re probably saving anywhere between an hour to three hours a day on commute alone.
Then why is it that suddenly you have less of it? Now that you’re thinking about it take a look back and ask yourself, “Did I always feel there weren’t enough hours in a day?”. I know I did.
If you’re wondering where all your hours disappear, you’re not alone!
The good news is, 24 hours is more than enough. If anything, managed right, you’ll end up with enough free time to get bored every day. But surely, as you get more hours out of your days, you’ll figure out ways to spend them.
You need a routine, a proper routine!
It’s good to have a routine. I’ll just make one and stick to it. Problem Solved? Maybe. You see, having a routine is the right way to go, but it’s essential to prepare it right.
Here’s How I would recommend you to get started:
Wake up early
Try to wake up at sunrise. Depending on seasons, that might be 5:30 AM or even 7 AM. Let’s set 7 AM as the absolute latest that you can wake up at, regardless of where you live. Some of you might already be waking up before sunrise for morning prayers. Stay up and enjoy the day morning!
Trust me, even if you stop reading here, you already know the most essential step towards getting your time back. You’ve guessed it, it’s waking up early. More importantly, as our circadian biological clock would have it, waking up with the sun is crucial for a healthy life. I’ll put in a link about this somewhere for you to read up more on.
Meditate and workout
Now I sound like I’m trying to steal more of your time by adding more activities to your day, don’t I? Trust me, I’m not. I promise you, you’ll save more time because of these.
Meditation helps clear your mind. While you’re at it, think about what you have to do today, what you want to achieve. No, meditation isn’t magic. It won’t automatically happen because you thought about it, but it’ll help you keep your focus.
Exercise also helps to uplift your mood, gets you into that active and energetic mindset that you need to get into before start working. You don’t have to do an hour-long extensive workout session(unless you want to). Simple pushups, crunches, or any other freehand exercise you’re comfortable with will do just fine. But spend at least 10 minutes working out.
Trust me on this, you’ll thank me later.
Make your work time-bound
Work is sacred. As a professional, you should always ensure you’re doing right by your role, responsibilities, and career aspirations. Part of which is doing things on time, without distractions. But don’t let your work consume the essence of all that which makes you, you. You won’t be doing anyone any favors by allowing yourself to burn out. (read the HBR article I’ve listed as related reading materials)
How can you make your work time-bound?
Set a time for yourself to start working, for me, it’s 10AM. I sometimes start earlier, but never after 10AM. Now add 8/9 hours to it. This is a good measure of finding out when to log-off.
Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten your lunch hour or breaks. If you’re appropriately focused, 6.5 – 7 hours(excluding breaks) is expected of you anyway. Keep track of how long you’re working vs. how many breaks you’re taking and their durations. Make sure you at least complete your 6.5 – 7 hours every day.
You should be able to get everything done in 6.5 – 7 hours on most days, inevitably there will be exceptional cases. But if you regularly find it difficult to finish your work within the acceptable hours, it’s imperative that you find the reason and resolve it.
It’s 6 PM now, time to log-off, wait! Look at your timer, have you spent 6.5-7 hours at least on your actual work? If not, then we need to work on your self-discipline. Go on, complete your hours. But don’t just do it for the sake of it, utilize this time correctly. If you don’t have anything else to do (should you be so lucky), spend this time to reflect on your previous work and how you can improve on those.
Once you’ve done right by your duties, Log-off. Don’t entertain any work calls/requests for the day unless it’s an emergency. Let your colleagues know of your schedule in advance and ask them to respect your time. It’s imperative to set some boundaries here.
Take A Break, You’ve Earned it!
Go do nothing for a change. Talk to your family, friends, or just look out of your window. You deserve this break. Take 15-20 mins for this. We’re not done with today.
Learning time
Who are we as people if we don’t spend time learning to be better than the rest, better than who we used to be. It’s time to do just that. Try to dedicate an hour of every day, at least, on learning something. It could be articles you read on medium, HBR, or some other credible and relevant source. It could be an online course that you’re taking. In any case, spend some studying. Have a plan, I want to learn a particular thing this week, or month. Follow through.
Entertainment, social life, and everything else
If you know how much time you want to allocate every day for learning, you know the earliest you can go for entertainment and social life. Which should be: Work End Time + 20 mins + learning time. Don’t start watching TV before that. Let’s say I start at 10 AM, end work at 6 PM, take a 20 min break, spend 1-hour learning. I can get into my social life from 7:20-7:30 PM.
Do whatever you want from this point onwards. I prefer having my dinner early and then watching TV. I chat with my friends, call my relatives, play games and so on. I do this until 11 PM.
Prepare yourself for the next day
Congratulations! You’ve made it! Now it’s time to keep the momentum. Open up a dairy. We’re going to do two things: make a list of all the things you’ve done today [ref: anti-todo list] and a general plan for tomorrow.
Why do I need a plan for tomorrow? Don’t I already have a time table prepared that I’m going to stick to? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ll do this very well for a week. Then out of the blue, something unexpected will knock you off your plan for a day. The next thing you know, you’re rationalizing deviating from the routine. “Just for another day, I’ll get back on track from tomorrow.” Yeah, because that’s exactly what is going to happen, right? 😛
Life is ever-changing, and the best routine you can have for a day is perhaps the one you could foresee for yourself the night before. Writing it down helps you commit to the plan, and doing this every day is renewing your commitment. This isn’t going to be a full hour by hour plan for your day, but a summary. “I’ll wake up at 7 AM, work my legs, finish working on task A, start working on B and C, read 5 articles on medium on Color Selection in UX”. And this will be a guiding factor for your daily meditation. Oh, did I mention that you should start off with this step? Oops, my bad.
Time for bed
It’s 11:30 PM now, whatever you were doing now, stop. Make your bed and turn off the lights. No more looking at your phone, it should already be on Do Not Disturb mode. Colors shifted to Night Mode / Night Sheild, you know the blue light filter one just in case you want to do a quick email check before going to bed. Okay, that’s it. No more looking at your phone. Try to fall asleep. In the first few days, you’ll struggle with this. Try reading a book, under yellow dimmed lights. If that’s not possible, listen to a podcast, or put on some white noise. Anything that keeps you from getting bored but doesn’t hamper your ability to fall asleep will do.
REPEAT THIS, EVERY DAY!
Bonus material
How to keep track of your working time and breaks?
I’m sure there are many different ways to do this. I use the free version of Clockify for this. Simply start the timer whenever you’re working and stop it when you take a break.
Having difficulties finishing your work within 7 hours?
Start off with self-evaluation, is there a skill mismatch? Then move on to ask yourself if you are taking too many breaks or getting interrupted in the middle of work by others or ad-hoc work. Finally, are you taking on more work than ideal?
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One reply on “Get more hours out of your days!”
Ribhu July 27, 2020 at 3:25 am
Good read!